SEC goes after the ‘Bitcoin Bernie Madoff’

Commentary: What’s next, investigating Beanie Baby fraud?

AlLewis

DENVER (MarketWatch) — There doesn’t seem to be a shred of evidence that alleged Ponzi schemer Trendon T. Shavers took a dime from anyone.

He took bitcoins.

Nevertheless, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil fraud charges against Shavers on Tuesday for cheating about 66 so-called investors from Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.

Some are calling Shavers, a 30-year-old from McKinney, Texas, the “Bitcoin Bernie Madoff.” The SEC says his alleged “sham” amounted to more than $4.5 million worth of bitcoins. He allegedly diverted some bitcoins for his own personal use, selling them for cash to pay rent, automobile expenses, meals, assorted retail purchases and casinos, the SEC said.

Shutterstock.com

Bitcoins look shiny but they aren’t real.

When I reached Shavers by phone, he politely declined comment. He wouldn’t even tell me whether he had enough bitcoins to hire some former SEC lawyer to defend him, or whether he thought the SEC might settle with him, without admitting nor denying guilt, for bitcoins.

I don’t actually care two bitcoins about these charges. What’s the point of nailing Bitcoin Bernie Madoff after completely missing the real money Bernie Madoff? It leaves me to wonder what sort of “investors” the SEC is going to try to protect next? People who still buy Beanie Babies?

Like the bitcoin, which pretends to be some kind of digital-age currency, the value of a Beanie Baby has long been volatile and dubious. It is a piece of plush fabric shaped like a bear. It isn’t even stuffed with real beans. If you told someone you were scammed out of thousands of dollars worth of Beanie Babies, they wouldn’t call the SEC. They’d call you a chump.

Despite the bursting of the Beanie Baby Bubble years ago, a First Edition Princess Diana Beanie Baby was recently listed on eBay for $100,000. A more common “Princess Bear,” looking pretty much the same, was listed for $6. Try to sell either of these little purple dolls at a garage sale and you might get a quarter.

Satoshi Nakamoto launched bitcoin in 2009 as a peer-to-peer electronic-cash system. Nobody seems to know who Satoshi Nakamoto is. It could be one guy. It could be a bunch of guys. Observers say the open-source software program this pseudonymous developer unleashed on the world is either the future of money or the next tulip bulb.

Those backing bitcoin as an alternative currency will say who trusts money when governments are printing so much of it? Whenever Ben Bernanke speaks, it is a good time to buy bitcoins.

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The value of a single bitcoin was less than $5 last year. It hit a high of $266 in April. At this writing it is worth about $97, and some observers say it is headed for a value of exactly zero.

Shavers’ promised people that their Bitcoin “investments” would go up 7% a week through some kind of bitcoin arbitrage play that he offered, the SEC said. His company, Bitcoin Savings & Trust, was originally named “First Pirate Savings & Trust.” He used Internet monikers “pirate” and “pirate40” in his postings.

And his real name, mind you, is Shavers, which is arguably a form of full disclosure in itself. Anyone who did business with him should have expected a haircut. But that isn’t the SEC’s view.

“Fraudsters are not beyond the reach of the SEC just because they use bitcoin or another virtual currency to mislead investors and violate the federal securities laws,” said Andrew M. Calamari, director of the SEC’s New York Regional Office.

If you want to hear how ridiculous this sounds, substitute the word “bitcoin” with “Beanie Baby,” as I have done this with parts of the SEC’s press release:

The SEC “today charged a Texas man and his company with defrauding investors in a Ponzi scheme involving [Beanie Babies] ...

“Shavers ... offered and sold [Beanie Baby]-denominated investments through the Internet ...

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